


Galileo

by Sun_bee



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Original Guardian Character, Warlock - Freeform, thanatonaut, voidwalker - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-31 01:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21034010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sun_bee/pseuds/Sun_bee
Summary: Small diaries and drabbles about my Destiny warlock, Galileo.





	1. Galileo

**i. GALILEO**

For a long time I didn’t have a name. On the long list of things that didn’t seem to matter anymore, a name was nestled between the way my hair had stopped greying and the gaping hole in my head where memory should be. I named the damned ghost first. Always chattering, beckoning, flying around me like a bird without wings. Mimir. The name made me think of story books and secrets; I thought it came from nowhere. 

Around a table beneath a Tower, guardians asked each other about memory. Powers that be had told us not to go looking for our lives that came before. But no one could stop us quietly recalling firsts and lasts over a drink or three. 

_ Io _ , I told them. Mimir woke me and I was strapped to a pilot’s chair, a layer of soft green dust covering me so thickly it flowed like water from my flight suit as I climbed out of the ruined craft. Time had passed since the Traveller left, spires half built on the horizon and a tang still in the air. I didn’t know how the little ghost had found me, but when I returned the City was only half built. 

_ And the first word _ , they joked.  _ What’s the first word you remember? Perhaps that can be your name. _

Second intake valve. A metal plate and broken read-out. Maybe that's why the shuttle had gone down. 

_ The shuttle _ , Mimir said,  _ was called Galileo _ . 


	2. Seven minutes of terror

**ii. Seven Minutes of Terror**

An old phrase leftover from before even the Golden Age. The time it took their crude machines to plummet through the atmosphere of solar worlds and touch down on alien surfaces. Obsolete. It doesn’t take seven minutes anymore to puncture the murky clouds that lie in a warm shroud around Titan. 

But that’s how long it took to ride the elevator through the levels of the half-sunken arcology. 10. 20. 50. 87. The screech of metal turned to white noise as the cart crawled downwards. The titan beside me was uneasy. I could hear his breath rolling heavy enough to break through on the comms. He was young. I doubted he’d had his second death before that day on Titan. Had he ever seen a Hive witch before? Had he ever seen a thing be Taken?

_ We don’t need to do this _, he muttered. What could there to be gained from diving into the hornet’s nest and smashing it with as big a stick as we could find? He didn’t need to know. I’d have gone alone, if that wasn’t a true-death sentence. There was so much power down there; it was stronger than me, for the moment. If I was going to learn from it, I needed to live through it. 

_ Timor est tempus _, I told him as he gripped the elevator door and planted his feet. _Scientia est aeternum._ I had read it in a diary. My diary, ancient and crumbling, from before the Collapse. He didn’t know what it meant. 

_ Fear is fleeting _, I explained, as I placed my boot on his back and kicked him off the step. I watched, the wave of his scream seeming almost tangible, as a hundred pairs of eyes blinked open in the dark.

_ Knowledge is forever. _


	3. Wishes

**iii. Wishes**

Eris Morn is beautiful. 

I didn’t know her before she made her wish. I only know what lies beneath wrappings and the sickly spill of Hive-ichor. The things she has survived, the choices she makes, the power she has touched. If I could share a quiet word in some fanciful moment where no shots need to be fired at the oncoming swarm, I would tell her. She’d understand. In the moment, terrible and necessary.  _ The Shape you’ve taken, it’s transcendent.  _

I wonder if she thinks the same. 

I tried to speak of wishes, once. Only once. They asked if I had been spending time with Thanatonauts and painted my brain on the wall a few too many times. The vanguard and the Praxics, they only know the old ways. Grains of sand crushed between moving pieces we’re too small to see.

The last warlock with a purpose beyond their understanding was cast out and not seen again, until they needed him. I’m not a great man like Osiris. My purpose isn’t defeating a menace or saving existence. It’s escaping it. Seeing past it. Discovering if I’m truly bound to it. I hope I don’t have to eat a worm to make it happen. 

I wish I had a single shard to make it so.

Mimir, encrypt this. I don’t want her to exile me as well. They don’t know it’s not ambition or vanity. It’s necessary.

And I’d miss the noodle shop too much. 


	4. Neptune

**iv. Neptune**

_[>Destination reached. Alignment peaking in twenty-seven minutes. Distance from Last City: four-point-three billion kilometers.]_

_>Mimir, don’t stop recording. We don’t have long._

_>Please, don’t do this. I can bring you back, but--_

_>But what?_

_>But it will hurt you. So much._

_>And?_

_>And I don’t want you to get hurt. We’re so alone out here, I don’t want you to die alone._

_>Dying doesn’t matter. And we’re not alone._

_>I know… I know we have each other, Leo, but--_

_>No. We are not alone. They’re here._

_>Leo, please. Please, can we go home?_

_>I’m going to prove it to you. And to them. If it's just us out here, they can't ignore me. This is the way._

_>I’m scared. Why aren't you?_

_>Because this is the way._

_[>Warning. Further action will cause decompression. Confirm.]_  
_ [>Command confirmed. Ejecting.]_

-

I'm back. We're going home.

The Thanatonauts were right.


	5. Memory

**v. Memory**

I do, to the best of my ability, try not to die. It happens, of course. Every now and then it’s unavoidable. But useful. Back in the days of iron lords when the City was just a camp in the shadow of the Traveller, we made the best of it. Then when we united we realised, we were all seeing the same thing. Memories. 

I never saw a point to making ritual of it. The name is pretentious and the warlocks are no better, but the methodology is sound. Straight forward. Measurable. 

Die. See. Revive. Repeat.

I saw a man’s face the first time I was stabbed through the throat. I loved him once. I heard the word,  _ goodbye _ . The day I left for Io to observe the Traveller as it worked its wonders on yet another piece of our solar system. 

I saw a hidden nook and stacks of books stashed inside when a Hive witch threw me into the methane sea. I replaced a board. I kept paper diaries because then no one would see. Prudent, though I didn’t know it.

I saw a king when I ejected from the cockpit. Crowned in black and stars and sitting a throne of his own creation. I don’t think that was my memory, but they showed me as I choked on the airless dark of space. 

I saw myself crumbling to dust. A light where my eye should be and a swirl of vacuum creeping over my skin. That’s not a memory. 

I think it hasn’t happened yet.

I have to make it happen.


End file.
